The tax and customs authorities will have to coordinate with each other to facilitate enterprises' access to tax and customs database and shorten the length of time for handling procedures, heard a meeting last week.
Responding to a question about the tax and customs authorities keep asking enterprises to submit the documents they have previously filed, deputy minister of Finance Do Hoang Anh Tuan told the meeting on administrative procedures and policies of tax and customs that the two bodies should not ask for what they already have in their database. The tax authority can access the data bank consisting of five million customs declarations to verify information about enterprises, he added.
Nguyen Thai Linh, director of Lien Son Computer Paper Co., asked why businesses have to pay the cargo scanning fee while scanning machines are assets of the State, which were bought with taxpayers' money.
According to Tuan, the fee was collected by port operators, which is not accepted, so enterprises do not have to pay it. The general Department of Customs will ask port operators to remove the fee.
In the long run, the Ministry of Finance will divide enterprises into groups. Enterprises which are not listed in the risk group are not required to have their cargo tested during the customs clearance process and the customs authority will focus on others.
Besides, the tax and customs authorities will have to ensure handling complaints of enterprises within the required time. A portal through which the tax and customs authorities will deal with difficulties of enterprises will be set up, according to Tuan.
Thesaigontimes
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